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Robert Morris: All About Programming

paulgraham.com

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Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#11

Post by amelius »

GuiA wrote: post #6

> The idea that one should ask questions about one's own life (e.g. your "What seems like work...?") and act on the answers was completely alien to me in those days, and I doubt I could have absorbed any wisdom in this department. That resonates deeply with me. Until my early 20s, I was terrible at absorbing any form of wisdom from anyone. I just went ahead forward into whatever interested me, with no regard for what…

> For those reasons, it feels like advice such as the one given by PG is lost: the people who need it most won't really get the importance of what he means, and the people who will get it can do so because they've already internalized it.

Indeed. If life came with a manual, then people would still say: who needs manuals? :)

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#12

Post by HillRat »

jnks wrote: post #9
bcd21 wrote: post #4

"Not wanting to look like a loser to the people I most admired, I was pretty late in admitting the obvious about math." Don't understand this part, what's the obvious thing about math he was late in admitting? Were the Bell labs people right in his opinion or not?

My reading: Bell Labs folks would have ordered it Programming > Math >> Computer Science. RTM was good at programming, was being taught CS at college, and took too long to learn that neither that nor math were for him and that Bell Labs had it right all along.

If I understand you correctly, I think you have it backwards -- as I read it, Bell Labs saw math as having "lasting value," while computer science was just a practical application. Morris didn't want to look foolish, so he persisted with math long after he realized that he really wanted to be a programmer; unfortunately, after he gave up on mathematics as a vocation, he didn't have the fortitude to keep in touch with those who advised him otherwise.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#13

Post by quaunaut »

This is one of those places where I've been really conflicted for as long as I've been back with programming.

Right now, I'm going with the path that not only makes more money(and thusly induces less stress), but also has a higher probability of making people's lives better, through the kinds of things I want to put my time and effort into being focused around enabling people to create their own jobs.

Yet I know extremely well what I want to do, what makes me happy. It will make some others happy, but a significantly smaller number. It certainly won't change lives for the better. But doing it would make it so the things I think about in the margins of my mind, all day and night, for as long as I can remember, are what I spend my life working on.

In essence: I can't tell if it's a better idea to do what makes me happy, or what makes others' lives better.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#14

Post by esonderegger »

tim333 wrote: post #3

Took me a couple of minutes to figure who Robert Morris was so to save others the effort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris

I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll this morning (And I highly recommend it!). In the Epilogue, Stoll writes about the Morris worm and briefly mentions:

(Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for "Any news on the brilliant project")

When I read that, I wondered if that was THE Paul Graham.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#15

Post by jimbokun »

jarcane wrote: post #10

I stayed away from pursuing programming as a vocation for almost 15 years. I intuitively knew as a child that there were parts of programming and using computers which "weren't work" for me, but also very much ones that were, and I foresaw the probability that I might cease to enjoy the "not work" parts after being ground down by too much work. As I come back to it now, I still think that. Increasingly I think it rea…

I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Paul Graham and Robert Morris started their own company was because they didn't want to take a job writing software for Windows.

I also believe the guys who started ITA software wanted a problem domain where they could justify using Lisp.

So there are a few precedents for finding an excuse to use more expressive languages to solve challenging problems, in a way that makes money.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#16

Post by auggierose »

GuiA wrote: post #6

> The idea that one should ask questions about one's own life (e.g. your "What seems like work...?") and act on the answers was completely alien to me in those days, and I doubt I could have absorbed any wisdom in this department. That resonates deeply with me. Until my early 20s, I was terrible at absorbing any form of wisdom from anyone. I just went ahead forward into whatever interested me, with no regard for what…

I advice you to stay away from the psychedelics. Trust me, this is an advice you can't afford not to believe until it is too late.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#17

Post by NhanH »

GuiA wrote: post #6

> The idea that one should ask questions about one's own life (e.g. your "What seems like work...?") and act on the answers was completely alien to me in those days, and I doubt I could have absorbed any wisdom in this department. That resonates deeply with me. Until my early 20s, I was terrible at absorbing any form of wisdom from anyone. I just went ahead forward into whatever interested me, with no regard for what…

I agree that most of the time, advice is lost. But I don't think it's because people don't get the importance of the advice, but rather because they don't recognize when the advice could have applied in the heat of the moment (even for advice that's not about split-second decision, during the time frame when it could have applied, we just don't realized it).

I remember knowing about "don't let your emotion control your action, especially when you're angry". I don't think anyone would disagree or disregard the advice, the problem is that when we're feeling angry, we don't necessary think we're angry, we just feel being right. Since I've realized that, I've to stop myself whenever I'm feeling strongly right about something, not when I'm feeling angry (though they are really the same emotion most of the time).

In a sense, it's actually not that surprising, since advice is given from a perspective of an third person outsider: I'm seeing you doing Y given the circumstances X, so I'm giving you the advice of not doing Y when X happens. But from my someone who X happens to, it's really Z to them from their perspectives, and so they don't recognize it as X. That applies even if you're looking back at your action in the past too.

Introspection is really hard.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#18

Post by pakled_engineer »

jarcane wrote: post #10

I stayed away from pursuing programming as a vocation for almost 15 years. I intuitively knew as a child that there were parts of programming and using computers which "weren't work" for me, but also very much ones that were, and I foresaw the probability that I might cease to enjoy the "not work" parts after being ground down by too much work. As I come back to it now, I still think that. Increasingly I think it rea…

I took a major pay cut so I wouldn't have to work with certain popular commercial languages ever again, and now enjoy working in a small studio where we create DSLs in Scheme. Every week I discover something new about Lisp and then use it on independent hobby projects, whereas before I didn't even want to look at a computer after work.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#19

Post by endgame »

esonderegger wrote: post #14
tim333 wrote: post #3

Took me a couple of minutes to figure who Robert Morris was so to save others the effort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris

I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll this morning (And I highly recommend it!). In the Epilogue, Stoll writes about the Morris worm and briefly mentions: (Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for "Any news on the brilliant project") When I read that, I wondered if that was THE Paul Graham.

Seconding this recommendation. I found a copy, used, at random for 50c. FIFTY CENTS. Easily the greatest enjoyment/price ratio of anything I own.

Have you read his later book, /Silicon Snake Oil/? It's interesting how wrong he ended up being about a lot of things.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#20

Post by lumpypua »

auggierose wrote: post #16
GuiA wrote: post #6

> The idea that one should ask questions about one's own life (e.g. your "What seems like work...?") and act on the answers was completely alien to me in those days, and I doubt I could have absorbed any wisdom in this department. That resonates deeply with me. Until my early 20s, I was terrible at absorbing any form of wisdom from anyone. I just went ahead forward into whatever interested me, with no regard for what…

I advice you to stay away from the psychedelics. Trust me, this is an advice you can't afford not to believe until it is too late.

You've clearly been burned. That's fine, but tell us your story rather than giving some vague advice devoid of context.
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